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Welcome to r/technology

Vision

/r/technology is a subreddit dedicated to the discussion of all things technology. This subreddit is for technology-related submissions only, but we allow articles which are of a political nature provided they are also significantly related to technology.

Definition

Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a pre-existing solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. (Wikipedia)*

Rules

1. Allowed Submissions

Submissions must be a technology related article or self post.

Self posts must contribute to /r/technology and foster reasonable discussion.

2. Follow the Rules of Reddit

3. Titles

Link submissions should use the article's title or a quote describing its content. They must be free of personal opinion and accurately represent the content of the article. Posts that fail to meet these criteria may be removed at moderator discretion.

4. No Image or Video Submissions

This does not include articles with supporting videos.

5. No Mobile Sites

These URLs are usually prepended with "m." or "mobile." Please link to the desktop versions of sites instead.

6. No Personal Information

No personal information or Facebook links.

7. No Petitions or Surveys

Also no crowdfunding submissions.

Transparency

Reforms

The moderators of this subreddit are dedicated to transparency and building trust with the community. /r/technology is currently undergoing reform to increase moderator transparency and openness. Currently implemented reforms:

"If there were enough newspapers stories like that then it would be warranted to believe that crime is a major problem in that city."

Agreed,.. However most newspaper stories are grounded in reality and have some factual basis to back them up. (Police reports, etc)... so it's reasonable to believe if you see 100 burglary stories about your neighborhood, that 100 burglaries actually happened.

SRS's claims about patterns of Racism/Mysogyny,etc on Reddit are NOT grounded in reality. They are cherry-picking dubious unsubstantiated comments (that ARENT related) and trying to misrepresent it to look like there is some overall/pandemic outbreak of nastiness on Reddit.

The reality is... will millions of users,.. you're pretty much guaranteed to have a small % of misbehavior. BUT... it's disingenuous to jump to any conclusion that those isolated incidents of misbehavior are related OR part of any coordinated pattern.

On any of the large sub-reddits,.. you're probably always going to have a certain # of antisocial users who post inflammatory comments. That's just the nature of the Internet. You can't clean that. (especially not since Reddit allows anonymous accounts).

The negative behaviors on Reddit probably only account for less than 1% of overall comments. This mistaken belief that there's some outbreak of sexism/racism/whatever on Reddit is so laughable it's almost ridiculous.

so it's reasonable to believe if you see 100 burglary stories about your neighborhood, that 100 burglaries actually happened.

Similarly, all the posts SRS collects, actually did happen.

They are cherry-picking dubious unsubstantiated comments (that ARENT related) and trying to misrepresent it to look like there is some overall/pandemic outbreak of nastiness on Reddit.

How they are uninstantiated? They provide links to most of the comments. What do you mean by "aren't related"? I don't think they are suggesting all of those racist comments were made by one poster or one secret group.

those isolated incidents of misbehavior are related OR part of any coordinated pattern.

Well, if all the comments they showcase have been upvoted then they are part of a coordinated pattern. I think that is the only pattern they are trying to show: that the community upvotes (and thus approves) of these comments.

Yes,.. the posts/comments happened..but they don't mean anything because their veracity cannot be verified. Reddit allows instant/anonymous accounts,.. so it's quite literally impossible to know if the hateful comments have any validity behind them. It could be trolls trolling, it could be multiple sock-puppet accounts all used by 1 person looking to cause trouble. It could be any number of unknown reasons. Scientifically, we CANNOT assign any weight/validity to those hateful comments because we can't verify their authenticity.

Upvotes have the same problem. Just because a comment is upvoted (or downvoted) to some degree IS ESSENTIALLY MEANINGLESS since we can't know WHY those upvotes/downvotes occurred. (Seeing upvotes on a comment DOES NOT necessarily mean someone agrees/supports that comment).

All of the assumptions you make about hateful comments or patterns of upvoting ARE ESSENTIALLY MEANINGLESS. (it's you projecting your own beliefs/stereotypes into the unverifiable data).

It's like flying over Africa and seeing a bunch of dead Zebras lying on the ground below.. and 10 different people in the plane jump to 10 different conclusions of what killed the Zebras. That's 10 wrong theories UNTIL YOU ACTUALLY CONFIRM WHAT KILLED THE Zebras.

Comments and Upvotes are like the Zebras. Any guesses or assumptions you make about INTENT of those comments/upvotes are pointless until you can actually confirm with verifiable data (WHICH YOU CAN'T EVER DO SINCE REDDIT ALLOWS INSTANT/ANONMOUS ACCOUNT CREATION).

Seeing patterns in the behavior on Reddit is similar to showing someone inkblots and asking "What do YOU see?"...

Yes,.. the posts/comments happened..but they don't mean anything because their veracity cannot be verified.Reddit allows instant/anonymous accounts,.. so it's quite literally impossible to know if the hateful comments have any validity behind them.

They are valid in that they actually happened. That is all that really matters. We're not carrying out a survey of the number of 'true' racists on Reddit. If there is racism, or other prejudice, on reddit, it doesn't matter if it was posted by trolls or a scientist carrying out an experiment. It should be removed.

Scientifically, we CANNOT assign any weight/validity to those hateful comments because we can't verify their authenticity.

Like I said, we are not carrying out a survey or any kind of scientific analysis. The comments are authentically racist/sexist/homophobic and should be removed.

Seeing upvotes on a comment DOES NOT necessarily mean someone agrees/supports that comment

If I actually physically said "I agree with this" it does not necessarily mean I agree with that thing. I may be lying for any number of reasons: perhaps a gunman is making me do it by pointing a rifle at my head. However, that is probably not the case.

It's like flying over Africa ...

I'm going to stop you there. It is not like that at all.

You keep acting like I need some proof of the intent of a racist post to say it is racist or proof that an upvote implies support of that post. I really don't, because racism is independent of intent and it is patently obvious that an upvote implies support of that post.